Forward Bound

Forward Bound

How to advance your career and find the right path for you.

Each issue, we ask a trainee or early-career member to pose their career questions to an established investigator and mentor. Here, Tala Curry, a PhD candidate at the University of Arizona Translational Neurotrauma Research Program, asks Kedra Wallace, PhD, how to advance a career and knowing when to say no. Wallace is at the University of Mississippi, where (as of July 1, 2023) she is associate dean of academic and faculty affairs, School of Population Health; professor, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology; and professor, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, School of Medicine.

Q: What is something you learned and implemented that has been fundamental to advancing your career and laboratory?
A: To be comfortable with what you don’t know. I think as a young scientist a lot of people feel as if you have to know everything in order to be successful. I personally love collaboration and am very secure in what I know and in the fact that I do not know everything. I think the tricky part about collaborating is to make sure that you are only collaborating with people who you know are highly ethical and knowledgeable. A very influential person in my life once said, “If you wouldn’t want to sit down and have a beer with them, then don’t collaborate with them.” Now that philosophy may not work for everyone, but for me it does. That also doesn’t mean don’t know anything about that area, because you do need to know more than the basics, but you don’t necessarily need to be an expert.

Q: When you feel like you are not progressing forward, how do you find the right path to create new opportunities?
A: I like to run two different projects simultaneously. That way if I am stumped by one study or if my team has been working in this area for a few years and we aren’t really getting anywhere, we can pull back and refocus our efforts on the other project. I have found that the more I think and think about something that has stalled, I start to overlook the really obvious answers or pathways. Pulling back gives me time to completely clear my mind of that project and focus on a different study. Then what often happens is one day a light bulb goes off and I am ready to start working on that other study again.

Q: What career/professional development activities have been most influential in your career?
A: As a postdoctoral fellow I attended a week-long leadership training for STEM professionals hosted by SACNAS. This was the training that I signed up for as a CV filler but that in reality changed my life. As a minority scientist, a STEM training that openly addressed and talked about barriers/statistics/problems (and offered solutions), along with cultural and professional issues, was a true game changer. I did not attend any other leadership trainings to know if they were equally as valuable, but I can say I would recommend leadership trainings.

Q: How do you recognize when you are doing too much, and how do you say no?
A: I personally have a hard time saying no to opportunities that are dear to me. Early in my career I developed a passion for mentoring and sponsorship, which later grew to include advocacy. As such, it is very easy for me to say no and not even consider opportunities that are not going to advance my passion. But if it is something that is going to help one of my causes advance, then I struggle to this day to say no. I have found that having a great team has helped me both balance my commitments along with helping me say no.

Got a career question you'd like to submit? Email it to tphysmag@physiology.org. We may use it in an upcoming Mentoring Q&A.